Yumeiro Patissiere SP Professional at a Glance

What tasted like happiness, anyway?

Wow. Talk about a change in tone.

That was my primary first impression of the whole thing; gone is the cutesy, catchy song about sweets and dreams, replaced with (an admittedly good) a more serious and harder-sounding song about romance. It gives an immediate atmosphere to the new series which makes it seem very different, although much at core has remained unchanged – Ichigo stars, she still wants to be a patissiere, and everyone is going to be baking their asses off.

I was happy to see that Ichigo’s group in class will have more girls in it, as one area I thought could’ve been improved was the amount of time spent on developing friendships with the other girls in the class; even though Rumi was Ichigo’s room-mate, we barely saw her. In fact, I figured with Lemon taking on a larger role that Rumi was a goner, but she’s actually in Ichigo’s group. Whether the groups themselves will matter much in the storyline of the new season remains to be seen, however. I’ll admit that it already seems, though, that the groups won’t matter very much given that Henri-sensei wants a few – but not all! – of A Group working in his village of pastries and sweets.

I’m feeling a little leery of the romance angle already, although I’ll confess that I did think it was handled decently in this episode. The part with Ichigo and Makoto walking along together was actually a pretty good scene, with the frame focused on their hands as they walk along, Ichigo starting to reach for Makoto a few times, yet each time letting her hand drop away. It endeared me a bit to it, as it came across as a pretty accurate portrait of how people behave in such situations.

I also like that it isn’t just Makoto with a crazy fan now – good ol’ Johnny McBeal is already driving Makoto insane, given his apparent interest in Ichigo.

Actually, Johnny McBeal in general is just cracking me up. He is so stereotypical and over-the-top that I can’t help but laugh. He’s basically a male version of Koshirou in terms of absurdity and ridiculousness. While I predict that both will cause a little bit of havoc for Makoto and Ichigo, ultimately they are about as legitimately threatening to that relationship as, oh, a seashell. I’m fairly certain that Ichigo and Makoto will prove to be of more trouble for themselves than anyone else.

Hanabusa and Andou only made a very small appearance in the episode. All those folks looking forward to a HanabusaxIchigoxMakoto love triangle sure are disappointed now! Hanabusa manages to look even more ridiculous than he did in the promo art, something not helped at all by his appearance in the OP wearing a bizarre pink, sparkly outfit. Andou’s appearance in the OP seems to imply that he has become quite the hot property, as he is shown with a girl on his arm with several others fawning in the background. The final shot from the OP of the main cast shows the same girl hanging off of him, but only about a third of her is visible. I thought she looked a lot like one of the generic female classmates from the first series, and have become pretty convinced that she is that girl, as the girl appears almost immediately after the OP when Ichigo meets several of her classmates after getting off of the plane. I can already tell you that I disapprove!

On the topic of the OP, I really liked it. And not just because Johnny is on a motorcycle in it (although I basically died over that). I love how the Sweets Spirits are dancing in the leather outfits in it; its just too funny/cute. I want to know who was wiping lipstick off their lips at the end of it, though – it definitely isn’t Ichigo, and it looks like from the hair that it could be Tennouji. I’m not sure why that would be there, though, as the other two shadowed folks in that are Ichigo and Makoto. The naked Makoto with the shining Ichigo part toward the beginning was pretty weird, although right before that Ichigo with her eyes shut kind of reminded me of the third CardCaptor Sakura OP’s animation.

I also enjoyed the ED. Marron looked like a hippie.

Anyway, I’m really looking forward to meeting Johnny’s sweets spirit, Maize, who is apparently a bit of a terror. I am also looking forward to next week’s episode in general, as, although I’m not entirely thrilled about the romance elements, I found everything I liked about the first season more or less present in this episode, not to mention that I got the usual excited feeling after watching it that I got after most episodes in the previous season. It also is just cool to see everyone grown up a bit – although, really, Ichigo’s still that klutzy? But she seems to have matured quite a bit otherwise.

Oh, yeah – but, seriously? Hanabusa? I swear they are selling him as the gay one. At least, in stereotypical fashion it seems that way. Andou’s OP portion showed him surrounded by girls, but Hanabusa was allll by himself, dancing, in a pink, sparkly body-suit-type thing with a bolero jacket. And while in the first season his dream was to, basically, coordinate his mother’s floral arrangement stuff with his pastry skills, now he wants to coordinate the decoration and interior design stuff also. And yet at the same time they are removing Andou as a potential boyfriend. Ah well, I wouldn’t really expect anything different from a shoujo show, honestly.

By the way, remember my ‘How Fast to BL’ thing? Well, YP: SP Professional’s got it’s predecessor beaten out by quite a bit – one episode. And, no, it wasn’t HanabusaxAndou. It was much weirder than that.

EDIT: I realized why I liked the OP so much – Mayumi Gojyou is the singer here, and I have an inordinate love for the ED she did for the first season of Pretty Cure.